Work is due to complete on the project – Safdie’s third airport building following Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel and Terminal 1 at Lester B. «Most of the avant-garde in our profession today is preoccupied with fundamentally the object building,» said Safdie. Unless we resolve this paradox, we will continue to be producing urban places which are disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilisation.»
Section News: work has begun on architect Moshe Safdie’s Jewel Changi Airport, which aims to «reinvent what airports are all about» by creating a shared public space under a glass dome with a massive waterfall and garden at its centre. During his closing speech at WAF, Safdie called for a «reorientation» of the way cities are designed. «The object building cannot make a city. This space has been designed in collaboration with PWP Landscape Architecture. Tree-like columns will be arranged in a ring around the edge of a roof garden, called the Canopy Park, to provide additional support for the roof. The architect’s Marina Bay Sands hotel development, which opened in 2011, has become an icon on Singapore’s waterfront. Site planSpeaking to Dezeen at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore in October, Safdie said that Marina Bay Sands had opened up an eastern market for his firm, whose current projects include a 38-storey high-density housing project in Singapore called Sky Habitat and a 900,000 square metre development in Chongqing, China. It will connect to Terminal 1 with an expansion of the existing arrivals hall, and to Terminals 2 and 3 via new footbridges. Safdie conceived this aesthetic in «the tradition of glass conservatories». He said that architects were obsessed with designing one-off towers in cities, creating disconnected urban environments and increasingly privatised public space, resulting in cities that are «not worthy of our civilisation». Rainwater will be collected via the waterfall and reused in the building, and at night it will be the backdrop for a light and sound show that diners can watch from overlooking restaurant terraces. Safdie Architects’ 134,000-square-metre addition to Singapore’s main airport will combine retail, leisure and entertainment facilities with gardens to create both a public space for local residents and a facility for passengers passing through the airport. Related story: Skyscrapers are creating «disjointed and disconnected» cities says Moshe Safdie»The new paradigm represented by Jewel Changi Airport is to create a diverse and meaningful meeting place that serves as a gateway to the city and country, complementing commerce and services with attractions and gardens for passengers, airport employees, and the city at large.»
«Our goal was to bring together the duality of a vibrant marketplace and a great urban park side-by-side in a singular and immersive experience,» he added. «The suspended roof arches over the covered atrium, which is connected at multiple levels to the surrounding retail floors,» explained the architect. Pearson International Airport in Toronto – at the end of 2018.
